The Psy-Changeling Collection (325 page)

He didn’t answer until she was sitting with her back braced against the headboard, her legs stretched out in front of her. “You fascinate me,” he said, stroking his hand down her thigh.

Nauseated, she tried to pull away, but he pinned her in place.

“When we talked before,” he continued in a calm, clear voice, as if they were close acquaintances having an everyday conversation, “I used to wonder what you were like beneath that Psy surface. I wondered if you were like other women or if you were more.”

“Drugged,” she said, her mouth full of cotton wool. “Not myself.”

Anger rippled across his features. “No. That’s rather disappointing. I want to play with
you
. It doesn’t matter—we have time.” He leaned in. “Your skin is so clear, so lovely.” His hand moved a bare centimeter away from the vulnerable flesh of her face. “I don’t want to lose my playmate too quickly, but after so long, I just . . . can’t resist.” His fingertip brushed her flesh.

Gaping, screaming mouths
.

Pleas. Whispers. Cries
.

Earth, dark and dirty
.

Blood spraying a wall. A thousand droplets of horror
.

Sophia fought the spiraling whirlpool, knowing that this time someone
would
come for her, her cop would come for her. All she had to do was survive.

Max made himself
come to a full stop a few feet from Bungalow Ten, his lungs burning after the sprint that had brought him here.

Instinct urged him to slam the door open and blast in, guns blazing, but he took two deep gulps of air, settled his breathing. “We have to be careful,” he said to the cold-eyed Psy who’d run beside him with a lethal grace that made it inhumanly clear he was a telekinetic. “If he’s near her with a weapon, he could decide to kill her if we startle him.”

Krychek looked at the building, no change in his expression. “The windows are curtained. How will you know what’s happening within?”

“Bonner’s ego was always his undoing,” Max said, walking silently to the door and twisting the old-fashioned door handle with care. As he’d hoped, the monster hadn’t locked it—the possibility of escape a taunt to his victim. Pushing it back a fraction, he chanced a look. Seeing nothing and no one in the living area, he opened it enough that he could slide in.

Not sure what Krychek’s interest was in this beyond a cool intellectual curiosity, he left the Councilor to make his own choices as he toed off his shoes and sodden socks and crossed the living area on quiet feet, heading toward the semi-open doorway he could see on the other end. Pressing himself to the wall, he glanced in through the crack on the hinged side of the door.

Sophie
.

She sat propped up against the headboard, her hair tangled, her face grazed and bruised. But it was the way she sat that worried him. Her head kept flopping to the side, and she seemed to have to force it back up. Her hands lay
by her thighs, bare and unprotected from the monster who sat in front of her, his own hand stroking the air bare inches from her face. Torturing her.

Shoulders rigid with the need to put the stunner in his hand to Bonner’s skull, Max was about to chance a shot when Krychek appeared beside him. The Councilor gave him a single nod, and this time, Max was ready for the teleport. He found himself standing in front of Bonner, his stunner pressed to the Butcher of Park Avenue’s temple.

Bonner froze. “Detective.”

“Drop that hand,” Max said in a flat tone that left no room for doubt, “or I’ll press the trigger.”

Bonner’s blue eyes went wide. “You sound as if you mean that.” He jerked his arm.

Twisting, Max shot him through the palm of his fucking hand before he could touch Sophia again, exposing the whiteness of bone. Sophia wrenched herself sideways on the bed at the same instant. The situation under control, Max was about to shove the Butcher to the floor and cuff him when a screaming Bonner was slammed across the room to come to a crumpled standstill in one corner.

Max, having thrown his body in a protective curve over Sophia’s, raised his head. “He was no longer a threat.” He got on the bed, cradling Sophia to his side.

“He’ll be a threat as long as he lives,” Kaleb said, turning to watch Max and Sophia with a detached kind of focus that made Max wonder if he’d exchanged one killer for another. “It makes logical sense to get rid of him.”

“He’s not dead?”

“Close enough as makes no difference.”

Max made a ruthless decision. “Strip his mind. We need to know where he buried his victims so their parents can take them home, so they can grieve.” He wondered if a Psy would understand.

But Kaleb Krychek asked no questions. “It’s done. I’ll note down the locations for you.” A pause. “He’s dead. Are you sorry?”

Max looked at Bonner’s crumpled body and felt nothing
but a savage kind of satisfaction. “No.” Maybe a better man would’ve answered differently, but Max had never claimed to be a better man. Holding Sophia tight, he looked down, “Sophie?”

She didn’t answer, her eyes closed, her lashes dark-moon crescents against her cheeks. “I need to get her to a hospital.”

Krychek didn’t move a muscle but an instant later, Max found himself standing in the middle of what appeared to be a Psy medical facility, Krychek beside him. The medics went motionless for a second before moving into gear. Answering their snapped questions as to what had happened, Max gave over his custody of Sophia—but refused to move from her side.

He had no awareness of when Krychek disappeared.

Kaleb looked at
the body of the human he’d just killed, his fingers playing with the small platinum charm—a single perfect star—that was always with him, no matter where he went. Glancing down at the star, he said, “For you.” For the one person who he knew better than anyone else on this earth, and yet could not teleport to, no matter how many times he tried.

And he’d tried every single day for over six years.

If others had been present in the room at that moment, they might’ve wondered at the sweep of black that eclipsed the stars in his eyes, a black so absolute, it was beyond ordinary, beyond acceptable. But there was only a dead man in the room, so there were no questions.

Placing the star in his pocket, Kaleb contacted the authorities and made sure this incident wouldn’t cause any problems. Given Gerard Bonner’s predilections, he didn’t have to push at all.

Then, when he was alone, he teleported to every location he’d ripped from Bonner’s mind to ensure he had the correct coordinates. Cold and desolate, each unmarked grave reminded him of the lightless rooms used by another killer,
a sociopath who’d groomed Kaleb to be his audience . . . and his protégé.

Kaleb
. Nikita’s voice came into his mind as he teleported away from the final grave and to the deck of his Moscow home.

It’s done. Sophia Russo and Max Shannon are both safe
. The gorge that fell away with jagged promise beneath the barrierless end of the deck called to him with the same whispered promise as the dark twin of the NetMind, the neo-sentience that was both the librarian and guardian of the Net. But Kaleb wasn’t going anywhere yet. Not until he’d tracked his elusive quarry, discovered what awaited.

Nikita’s telepathic voice fluctuated in strength for a second.
I apologize. I was speaking with the medical staff
.

The J?

She’s in a coma—the drugs they used appear to have had a serious side effect
. A pause.
Thank you
.

Kaleb could have reminded her it hadn’t been a true favor, that he’d get his payment, but he didn’t. Not today.
Are you certain, Nikita?

She didn’t ask him how he knew what she was going to do.
There’s no use fighting the wave. Those who do will drown
.

Some will say that you’re the one who’ll drown, smashed against a wall of Silence
.

And you?

Kaleb looked down into the blackness of the gorge, but it was another darkness that he saw, the light blinking out in a woman’s eyes as she begged for mercy.
I think it’s time
.

CHAPTER 43

Now that it’s come down to it, I find I can’t say good-bye after all, can’t bear the thought of letting you go. It’s a selfish, stubborn need, but it holds me hostage.

—
Sophia Russo in an encrypted and time-coded letter to
be sent to Max Shannon after her death

Sophia felt painfully
exposed, as if her skin had been rubbed off to bare her insides. Whimpering low in her throat, she opened her eyes. The lights stabbed and the voices, they were too sharp, too piercing.

“Sophie.”

She turned her unseeing, dazzled eyes toward that voice. And when he wrapped his hand around hers, she held on. Because he was
quiet
. He made everything else quiet, too. Gulping in a breath, she tried to think, tried to focus. “What . . . happened?”

“They’re using other drugs to counteract the narcotics,” he said, and she knew then that his name was Max. “Medics say you’re beginning to respond well.”

Images, broken, disjointed, fell into her head. “How long?”

“Twenty hours,” he told her, deep grooves in his face that she knew hadn’t been there earlier. “I was starting to worry you’d never wake up.”

Her brain fought to slough off the lingering effects of the drugs, driven by what she felt for this man with his dark male beauty and his tenderness. “My body shut down to deal with the drugs.”

“That’s what the M-Psy said.” He glanced to his right.

Following his gaze, she saw the M-Psy beyond the glass, standing at a monitoring station. “I’m in a Psy hospital.”

“It’s a private one,” Max told her. “Nikita’s certain of the loyalty of the staff.”

But no matter their loyalty, Sophia thought, they had to know she’d broken Silence. By the sheer fact that she was gripping Max’s hand, they had to know. “They’ll—”

“Shh.” Leaning in, he lowered his voice. “I told them my natural shield seems to help anchor you.”

She thought of that, pulling aside the cobwebs that threatened to suffocate her. “It’s true.” He was acting as a psychic wall, keeping everything at bay.

“Good.”

But along with that understanding came another. “I can’t spend my life holding your hand.” Her fingers clenched around his strong, capable grip. “My telepathic shields . . . I can’t quite focus enough to test them. There’s no way they could’ve survived Bonner and the drugs.”

His expression was grim. “You’re not giving in on me, are you?”

“No,” she said, and meant it. He was
hers
, the only person who’d ever been hers. And he needed her, this cop who held his pain so close, his scars hidden deep. “I’m not giving you up.”

His eyes blazed. “Good girl.”

She knew from the way he looked at her that he wanted to press his mouth over hers, meld them so closely that nothing would ever again tear them apart. It took everything she had not to beg him to act on the desire. Because when Max touched her, she became alive, became human. “I need you to know something,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “No. Tell me on our wedding day.”

Her mind swirled again, but this time, it was a different
kind of a dance, inciting an odd breathlessness. “I once testified in a case where the prosecutor showed a video taken at a Greek wedding”—because the accused had been seen there in the company of the woman he’d eviscerated an hour later, but she didn’t want to focus on the darkness then—“and there was a part where they all threw plates on the floor.”

Max laughed, the lean dimple she so loved coming out of hiding. “You want to throw plates on the floor at our wedding, baby, I’ll buy you a damn crate of them.”

“No.” She wanted to echo his laugh, trace her finger over his lips. “I think I’d like to get married within the walls of the place we decide to call home.”

Max’s expression changed, becoming savagely masculine. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

With the counteragents
acting with remarkable speed, Max intended to take Sophia home later that day so she could heal in privacy, but the M-Psy refused to release her. “Look,” Max finally snapped, his temper hanging on by a thread so thin, it was close to invisible, “she’s got no physical injuries aside from a few cuts and bruises, and the side effects from the drugs are all but gone.” In spite of his wrenching need to hold her, he’d never have suggested taking her home otherwise. “Why does she need to remain here?”

The M-Psy looked at Sophia. “I need to discuss that privately with Ms. Russo.”

“She’s my partner.” Max was going to have trouble leaving Sophie alone for a long time coming. “And she’s already been subject to attack while in a supposedly secure location.”

“Let go of her hand,” the medic said.

Max squeezed Sophia’s fingers. “Are you insane?”

“No.”

Sophia looked at the M-Psy, then back at Max. “Do it slowly,” she said. “I’ll be able to tell if there’s a problem.”

Protective instincts rebelled. “Sophie.”

“I must know.” Her eyes said far more than her words.

Sweat broke out along his spine as he released his grip until only their fingertips touched—then Sophia broke even that contact. He was ready to clasp her wrist at the first sign of trouble but she stared at him before turning her attention to the M-Psy. “I should be dead. The voices should have crashed into my mind—but I can’t hear even a whisper.” The jagged, splintered thoughts that had stabbed into her mind when she first woke were held far at bay, her mind a clear, pristine pond.

“Exactly.” The M-Psy put down the electronic file in his hand. “According to the records I’ve accessed, your shields were a cause for grave concern—to the point where you were on a rehabilitation watchlist. Yet according to my scans, those shields are now airtight.”

Max sucked in a breath beside her, his tall frame held taut. “Is he right?”

“Take me outside, Max,” she said, curling her fingers into the bed beneath the sheets when they would’ve reached for her cop. “I need to be certain.”